Southern Africa continues to recover from the 2015/2016 El Niño-induced drought, which by January 2017 had affected about 41 million people across the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC)1. The substantial government- and SADC-led response, supported by $900 million from the international humanitarian community2, empowered farmers to take advantage of a good 2016/2017 rainfall season, delivering an April 2017 cereal harvest 3 per cent above the 5-year average.

Concerted action needed to stop diseases and pests from ravaging the food chain

FAO toolbox shows how prevention, early warning, preparedness can save lives and livelihoods

1 February 2017, Rome - Food availability and food hygiene are compromised every day by diseases and pests that plague plants and animals as well as various types of contaminants. This happens on farms, in factories, at home, in fresh or sea water, in the open air and in the midst of dense forests.

El Niño conditions persisting during the 2015/16 planting season have caused the worst
drought in 35 years in Southern Africa, resulting in a second consecutive failed harvest.
This has created severe food shortages and compounded existing vulnerabilities. Since July
2016, Namibia and Botswana have declared national drought emergencies, in addition to the
declarations made earlier by Lesotho, Malawi, Swaziland and Zimbabwe. Madagascar issued
a letter of solidarity with the SADC Appeal, and Mozambique has maintained a red alert in
affected areas.

Key Messages

While generous donor support has assisted humanitarian responders to reach millions of drought-affected people, significant funding shortages continue to impede the response. Only half of the funds for emergency food and agriculture assistance has been raised, while many other sectoral responses remain largely unfunded, including education (12 per cent funded); protection (18 per cent); water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) (18 per cent); and early recovery (26 per cent).

We are living in the most unusually warm period in history and this is taking a huge toll on the world’s most vulnerable. 2015 was the hottest year on record and 2016 looks set to be even hotter.
As this year’s El Niño in the Pacific lurches towards becoming a La Nina1 , the run of record temperatures looks set to be broken again. But in some ways, this year is not unique. It has become widely acknowledged among the development community that weather-related disasters are the ‘new normal’.

Foreword

The 2015-16 El Niño event has resulted in the worst drought in much of southern Africa in 35 years. is has had a catastrophic e ect on the food security of millions of people across the region. Beyond a food security crisis, the region has wider humanitarian needs that result from water scarcity, including impacts on access to water and sanitation, education, health services and livelihoods.

ROME, July 12 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Drought exacerbated by the El Nino weather pattern could lead to a spike in new HIV infections in southern Africa as women and girls turn to sex to survive and patients miss treatments, the United Nations childrens' agency UNICEF said on Tuesday.

Abnormal rainfall patterns during 2014/2015 have contributed to a spike in food insecurity, which is currently affecting at least 27.4 m people regionally (and this excludes Angola, which has yet to publish official figures; and Madagascar, which did not present to SADC, but where 1.9 m people are food insecure, of which 460,000 people are severely so). In Malawi and Zimbabwe, 2.8 m and 1.5 m people are food insecure respectively.

The IASC Alert, Early Warning and Readiness report is produced bi-annually as an inter-agency effort
by the Task Team on Preparedness and Resilience (TTPR) for IASC member agencies. The report
highlights serious risks that were either identified as being of particular strategic operational concern
or as having a high probability and impact on humanitarian needs. In addition to collaboratively
assembling the report, the report includes an analysis of the state of readiness, prepared by OCHA,
which is compared against each risk.

In 2015, as the Millennium Development Goals reach their deadline, the world can reflect on real progress. Since 1990, thanks to the actions of millions of people around the globe, extreme income poverty has been cut by almost two-thirds, child mortality has fallen by more than half, and more children are attending primary school than ever before.

Water is essential to human development and prosperity, but many people still live without reliable access to it. As the number of people in the world increases, water scarcity is forecast to worsen. The Safeguarding the World’s Water report documents USAID’s water sector activities that address key global challenges during fiscal year 2014. The report also shares progress made during the first year of implementing its Water and Development Strategy.

These sporadic changes in weather have had an effect on the strategies adopted by women in communal farming and how they use renewable energy sources. According to the SADC Gender Protocol Barometer Zimbabwe 2015, launched at the Gender Protocol Work Summit earlier this week, 59% of rural women in Zimbabwe work in communal lands and so they are most affected by changes in climate since they rely on rainfall for their livelihoods and domestic use.